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It finds way too many false-positives and it's too much of a hassle to recover quarantined items. Sometimes it just deletes files outright without quarantining or asking permission. It's a resource hog, and it is more difficult to uninstall than it should be. It forces you to reboot your computer when it wants you to, without the option to do it later (this doesn't happen in newer versions I don't think). And probably the worst thing is the pop-ups every 20 seconds reminding you to renew your subscription, even though it doesn't run out for another 200 years.

Holy fuck I hated those popups whenever I use my parents computer. I have had literally no antivirus installed for over 2 years now and am still completely fine. As long as you have an ounce of common sense and don't go on sketchy sites you will be fine with no antivirus.

I would still recommend you install Microsoft Security Essentials; it's free and does the job well. If you stay off sketchy websites you should be fine, but having a solid, functional antivirus that stays in the background is never a bad thing.

Your telling me. I work at a tech shop, and we give people the choice of MSSE or Avast! because they are the lesser of the evils. We had so many people come in with Norton that wanted it removed, that one of the kids in the back wrote a .cmd script to remove the program.

Coming from someone who fixes family, coworker, friends, and a small client base, please stop installing avast. Avast would be on this list if it were just overrated software. Its a terrible program. MSSE should be fine, and I'll concede AVG sometimes but avast is seriously loaded with malware.

I've never seen Norton catch a real virus. It frequently pretends to find them but god help you if you have a real virus. This has been true for at least 10+ years. I remember when it used to actually work.

Lately, I've been using this website [www.av-comparatives.org] to compare antivirus programs. You can compare performance costs, false-positive ratio, and various "Will it catch it?" tests between a large handful of the most popular antivirus programs. Definitely worth looking at if you want to get away from Norton but lack the time to put all the leaders to the test.

Yeah, I feel that the Windows version of iTunes is really good advertizing to avoid getting a Mac because of the impression that it's probably all horrible shit software like that. If I was Apple I would have gone to great pains to impress the Windows users, but no, it has to be one of the worst pieces of crap in the history of crap.

The worst is that they now have a checkbox underneath "Install the AVG secure search toolbar and make AVG secure search my default search engine" that says something like "Deter or block any changes made by me or other programs that may change my default search provider from AVG"

Ran into it on my grandparents' computer. They're in their 90s, and someone installed AVG for them without bothering to check any of the additional settings. Took me 20 minutes to get it back to "the google thing" for them.

Skype is awful on linux. It (and steam, but not for long) is the only x86 program on my computer, which is mildly infuriating. It also has some weird problems with pulseaudio which makes it utterly unusable.

on windows: its terribly slow and buggy. universally: a dinosaur compared to other players out there featurewise, can only sync to 1 brand of player, folder monitoring never works right.

its completely unintuitive for anything besides syncing an ipod and buying crap from them. here's a test for people who dont believe me: go get windows media player. perform all the steps to burn an audio cd. write them down on a piece of paper. now go do the same thing in iTunes. put the two pieces of paper side by side. and just look at it for a few minutes. which one would you like to explain to grandma over the phone?

previous versions took you to the fucking store font every single time it launches. WTF.

If I add a folder to the library that has already been added, it creates duplicates of all my songs. ie, if I throw a new Pink Floyd album under a Music\Pink Floyd\Animals directory, I can't tell iTunes to just rescan \Music otherwise all of my library (except for \Music\Pink Floyd\Animals) will be duplicated.

if you look in the itunes preferences, you should have the option to let itunes organize the media folders. make sure it's checked. now, when you want to add songs, drop them (folder, files, etc) IN itunes, NOT the actual folder structure.

there is an option in the dropdown menus that consolidates and cleans up the library, i think under File (can't check atm). then, there is a "Find Duplicates" option in one of the dropdowns, use it to cleanup any existing duplicates. that's it!

let me know if i can be of more help. if i haven't been helpful, just downvote me.

Even on a new pc whenever iTunes runs or I plug in a device I know I have to leave the pc alone for 5mins while iTunes has a small fit. The interface craps out and it doesn't respond properly while its busy thinking about whatever it is doing.

I've used Songbird since the beta (its an open source player more or less designed to look like itunes, except with less sucking), I had so many problems with i-tunes that I was more willing to deal with the super glitchyness of a brand new program than I was willing to deal with that crap. Songbird has gotten a lot better though, I'd recommend checking it out.

Yeah, what's up with that? For years my father used that piece of crap. Every few months I would get an email saying, "McAfee is asking me if I should blah, blah,..." My response was always, "It's nothing, ignore the message and please uninstall that peace of crap it's slowing your machine to a crawl." Nope, he refused and though McAfee was awesome and well worth the yearly subscription price. When I got him a new computer I said, "McAfee won't work on it, so I put MSSE on it." He was sad, but acquiesced. He has had zero problems since. What's bizarre is he has never questioned my computer advice before or since. McAfee has some weird Baby Boomer mojo.

I had to try and remove it from my parent's computer (They're the type that don't read the tick boxes when they install stuff) because it was conflicting with their main Antivirus. The uninstaller wouldn't run. it would CTD every time I loaded it. Had to force uninstall that bitch.

is softwares that you install that try to sneak in search bars without your knowledge

they'll give you two options "express install (recommended)" and then "Customized install(not recommended)"...and most people would chose express because they feel its easier...bam! avg or ask toolbar that you cant remove

you have to go customized to uncheck all the freeware that they want to offload on your system..

It always pisses me off. a lot of CODEC softwares try to pull that bullshit.!

I can't stand how I constantly read about new vulnerabilities discovered in Java every day, and here they are advertising that "It's installed on 3 Billion devices" every time you fucking run an updater for it.

Maybe people hack the fuck out of your software because you keep telling them that it's everywhere.

It's an interpreted language whose only good implementation is in embedded web applications. And it's being out competed in that aspect.

It's slow and people normally use it to pump out programs with the lowest development time. However, python and other languages do this better.

However, java has a lot of support and it's "enterprise quality" and so in many computer science learning environments they use it to teach students. However, this also teaches them bad habits because java doesn't have proper memory management and (more nerd stuff here)

Principles: number 5: It should be "interpreted, threaded, and dynamic.

interpreted languages by their very nature are slower than compiled languages.

although it does not strictly conform to the definition of an interpreted language because it compiles into java bytecode, having it run through an interpreter would make it much slower than a language compiled into machine code.

also I did not say it was not used in high-performance environments. It's just not optimal for such use. The garbage collector in java consumes resources even if you know which objects to free from the memory. The use of destructors in languages such as C++ negates this and also renders GC not so useful. GC also causes the program to stutter and form lag spikes when it's trying to detect which objects to remove, because the moment it gathers is unpredictable. In anything involving interactive programs this is completely unacceptable.

I'd like to suggest you avoid using inane comments such as: "youre really just listing some bad assumptions and I'm going to assume you have very little experience in industry.". My person had nothing to do with my arguments, this is not furthering the conversation but making me much less receptive to any points you have to make.

That was my bad. After reading a bit I learned that java isn't exactly interpreted because it doesn't completely avoid compilation. But having to run through a jvm would make it significantly slower than a language that compiles into machine code. Thanks for the info by the way!

The worst part about it is that apple computers appeal to the type of college students who only use it for Facebook, google, and word. It's a waste of money and my 300$ Asus laptop can surf the web just as well.

Idk, I like both of those programs. The GIMP GUI is pretty spotty, but you can get stuff done once you get the hang of it. VLC is a Swiss Army Knife of movie players. I've never had issues with VLC that weren't related to the file or the storage medium.

I refused to switch to Chrome no matter what anyone said. It was Stockholm Syndrome...I was stuck.
One day for shits and giggles, I downloaded Chrome. It was like a unicorn shit on my computer in the form of a web browser. From then on I haven't looked back...except at work where the choice is either IE or FF.